The present invention relates to a motor vehicle drinking water warming and heating device and relates more particularly to such a device which reclaims waste heat from motor vehicle engine cooling water to warm up drinking water without affecting the normal operation of a motor vehicle or increasing its power load.
In motor vehicles, a drinking fountain, a hot drinking water supply device or a refrigerator must be separately provided since they are not included in the standard equipment of a motor vehicle. Regular drinking fountains, hot drinking water supply devices or mini-refrigerators that are provided for use in motor vehicles are generally attached with an AC/DC converter so that they can be directly connected to the car battery supply of a motor vehicle. Using these types of electric appliances may consume much power which more or less affects the operation of a motor vehicle. There is provided a kind of drinking water heating device which has means to guide drinking water to circulate through the exhaust manifold of the engine of a motor vehicle permitting drinking water to be warmed up by waste heat. This drinking water warming method does not consume any extra power supply of a motor vehicle, however, the capacity of warm water supply is limited to the holding space of the pipe circulating through the exhaust manifold. Therefore, this structure of drinking water heating device is still not satisfactory in use.
In motor vehicles, heat energy is converted into kinetic energy for driving the wheels of a motor vehicle. During the converting process, energy loss and waste heat will happen. Mechanical improvement may reduce energy loss to the minimum. However, waste heat can not be eliminated if a combustion fuel system is provided for producing heat energy. Therefore, to utilize engine waste heat does not affect the operation of a motor vehicle in any case. The present invention uses the engine waste heat in the engine cooling water system of a motor vehicle circulating through an engine cooling water circulation loop associated with a drinking water warming and heating device to warm drinking water for service, which device has an electric heating element connected to the car battery supply of said motor vehicle to heat the warmed-up drinking water to boiling with less battery power consumption.